Who doesn't want to be The Leader? Your team listens to you and respects you, you're the one to come up with the team's attack plan, and when the team gets publicly recognized, you get most or all of the credit for saving the day because you're the "face" of the team. Because of these perks, many people desperately want to be The Leader of their team.

Those aren't, however, the only reasons a character wants to be The Leader. There are times when a character resents the actual leader of the group, either due to an ego issue or due to justified resentment of The Leader's methods. The Lancer is likely to be a Leader Wannabe, because of his position on the team. Other times the Lancer doesn't especially want to lead but the Leader assumes he does, causing the Leader to watch his back unnecessarily.

This trope often manifests as the character declaring himself the leader of whatever group he wants to lead, but no one acknowledges him, often because he either annoying, does nothing to contribute, or a combination of the two. They will often be a Miles Gloriosus.

Examples

Anime and Manga

Jason, the Lancer to Mark in Battle of the Planets, is more than a little annoyed that Mark is the leader instead of him.

Comics

When Damian Wayne briefly joined the Teen Titans (at Dick Grayson-as-Batman's urging), he immediately declared himself leader (since the current Robin is traditionally the leader of the team), but this led to conflict with Red Robin (Tim Drake), the actual leader of the Titans.

Serenity. Jayne tries this at one point when he's disgusted with Mal's leadership.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. When Butch and the Kid return to the Hole in the Wall Gang they find that Harvey wants to take over from Butch. Harvey challenges Butch to a fight, but Butch takes him out with a surprise Groin Attack.

In Warrior Cats, many young cats claim they want to be leader someday, though most of them are just happy to be warriors when they become older. The most notable example of a cat wishing to become leader is the series' Big Bad: he attempts to secretly kill the Clan leader in order to become leader himself - as second-in-command, he gets the position if she dies.

Live Action TV

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: After Harmony & Spike break up, Harm decides to become the leader of a vampire den of her own. Upon hearing about this:

In Justified Devil is The Dragon to Boyd Crowder. Ehen Boyd goes to prison for assaulting a US Marshall, Devil decides that it is his time to be in charge of the gang. However, Boyd does not plan to be in prison for long and left precise instructions about what is to be done in his absence. Boyd's girlfriend Ava tries to remind Devil of this but Devil refuses to take orders from a woman even if she is speaking for Boyd. Ava refuses to be disrespected and corrects Devil's attitude by hitting him in the face with a frying pan. When Boyd gets out and takes back control of the gang Devil becomes The Starscream and tries to take over by killing Boyd.

In an episode of Leverage Hardison decides that he would like to in charge of a con for once. He threatens to go on strike if he is not given a chance so the group makes him temporary leader. He approaches the con as if he was designing a video game and has great initial success but ultimately he overcomplicates things and it almost blows up in his face.

On M*A*S*H, Frank Burns often would covet being the CO, and would thus relish the times when (as 2nd in command) he would be temporarily put into command (his underlings, not so much).

Junpei from Persona 3 is jealous of the main character after he becomes the leader of the group because he's the only one who can actually summon his persona at the time.

Lily in The Walking Dead attempts to lead the group, but most of the survivors, except her father Larry, listen to Kenny instead when it comes to important issues or life-threatening situations.

Sten sort of drifts into this in Dragon Age when (or is it if? not sure if it is dependent on player choice) when he confronts the player character before going into the cultist village and claims he is taking control of the party.

The TV series had Abis Mal, who often plots to become sultan - apparently just to wear the Sultan's Cool Hat.

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Five hats means that five tropers think it is ready to publish.

You are saying that you think this draft is ready to be published. That means the description is not ambiguous,
it doesn't duplicate an existing trope, there are at least three examples, and the title makes sense.

Is that what you meant to do?

You are saying this draft has a ready-to-publish hat it does not deserve and you are taking it back.

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